Metra takes steps toward preventing death by train

A Metra customer walks to a train prior to its departure at Union Station in downtown Chicago on Tuesday, April 3, 2018.

A Metra customer walks to a train prior to its departure at Union Station in downtown Chicago on Tuesday, April 3, 2018. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Richard Wronski

The woman was perched atop the ledge, and Matthew White went to help.

It was a typical February morning in downtown Chicago this year. White, 52, a Metra employee, was installing equipment near the Van Buren Street station. Alerted by a dispatcher that a woman was on the bridge, her legs dangling over the tracks, White went to find her.

White began a conversation with the woman, and after a few moments, he managed to help her off the ledge and keep her calm. Soon, Metra police arrived and escorted the woman to a hospital for help.

“Some people out there are just hurting and need an extra helping hand,” White said of the incident. “(They) need to know people care for them, that there’s another day, and there’s always a tomorrow.”

White “prevented what otherwise would have been a terrible tragedy,” Metra Chairman Norman Carlson said when Metra’s board of directors honored White for his intervention.

The incident was one of 15 occasions so far this year when Metra employees intervened in potential suicides, the agency said. Last year, the agency tallied 51 incidents where railroad employees stepped into situations where people appeared to be in distress or were potentially a danger to themselves.

The employees have been trained in Metra’s “Question, Persuade and Refer” program, designed to identify when someone is experiencing anxiety or difficulty, engage with them, bring them to safety and refer them to help.

The program, known simply as QPR, “has been extremely successful in recognizing people in distress” and is being expanded, Carlson said.

More than 60 railroad industry representatives, safety advocates, law enforcement officers and others recently convened a summit in Chicago to discuss ways to reduce trespassing and death-by-train incidents.

The problem is particularly acute in the Chicago area, experts say, because the city is the nation’s railroad hub, served by six Class I railroads and Amtrak. Metra itself runs more than 700 trains a day.

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, there were 24 suicides on Illinois railroad tracks in 2017.

The QPR program is aimed at preventing suicides, a topic Carlson admits railroads traditionally have been reluctant to discuss. Indeed, only in recent years have the FRA and the Illinois Commerce Commission started keeping statistics on suicides by train.

So what’s to be done?

Training rail employees is a start. Metra has trained more than 700 engineers, conductors and station personnel under QPR. Next to be trained are field employees, like White, whose jobs involve working along the right-of-way.

Next, posting more signs to help deter the desperate or depressed. Metra will soon begin posting signs along the lines it controls. The signs will say, “If you need to talk, we’re here to listen. Let us help.” The signs will include phone and text numbers for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255).

The BNSF has already posted its own signs along the Metra line that it operates. These signs say, “There is help. Call us.” The Union Pacific has an agreement with local Rotary Clubs to place signs at the stations along its three Metra lines, officials said.

Experts say the signs can be effective because any last-minute intervention — be it a conversation with a concerned stranger or a distraction that takes someone's mind off a crisis — can prevent a person from intentionally stepping in front of a train.

The DuPage Rail Safety Council, in 2016, launched a campaign to reduce “Tragedy on the Tracks.” The organization outlined 22 steps, from urging the federal government and lawmakers to focus attention and funding on the problem, to encouraging local communities to invest in video surveillance along railways.

Dr. Lanny Wilson, a Hinsdale physician who chairs the organization, points out that similar efforts have been successful in sharply reducing railroad grade-crossing fatalities, such as when motorists skirt lowered railroad gates and attempt to beat trains. So successful, in fact, that significantly more people die as a result of trespassing and suicide than at highway-rail crossings. Thus, Wilson says, now it’s time to refocus attention on preventing trespass and suicide deaths.

“Just because people do the wrong thing,” Wilson said, “death or disability should not be the penalty.”

Richard Wronski is a former transportation reporter for the Tribune. He publishes the Chicago Transportation Journal, www.chitranspo.com.